THE PROPOSITION

by Judith Ivory

  Then her spectacles caught the light from the window, reflecting. The lenses blinked at him, obscuring what was behind them. On impulse, he reached and unhooked her eyeglasses, lifting them off.

  With her, of course, grabbing and protesting. He won by the length of his arm; he held them overhead. Then, setting them down on the piano, he took hold of her and danced her away from them.

  "I can't see." Worse and worse, Winnie thought. Barefoot and blind.

  "What's this called?" He let go of her hand—it was like being left out on a limb, twirled in a blur. He touched the lace yoke of her dress at her collarbone before his hand came back to hers to guide her.

  "What?"

  "The word. Give me the word for it." He stared at her collarbone. With her spectacles off, her whole world was muted, narrow. Her myopic eyes could bring nothing into focus but him.

  "Um, ah—lace."

  He raised a rueful eyebrow, the way he did when she didn't give him enough credit.

  Only that wasn't the problem. It was a matter of trying to think when he put his finger on her collarbone as he waltzed her backward and stared down at her, nothing but a fuzzy room turning behind him.

  "No," he said. "The stuff underneath, here"—again he let go, leaving her hand in the air, to point—"that you can hardly see."

  She looked down, then missed a step. He put his finger in a hole between lace rosettes.

  For a few seconds, she couldn't have told him her own name. Then she let out a light breath. "Ah-h-h." A sound that was mostly air. "Tulle," she said. "The lace is crocheted onto silk tulle."

  "Silk tulle," he repeated. Perfectly. "Silk tulle the color of flesh." Every sound correct. Then he grinned faintly and added, "Blimey." She blinked. She wanted to hit him. He was having her on, playing with his old accent. While she tried to keep her equilibrium on a dusty floor in her bare feet, blind, with only his arm for balance, and his teasing humor.

  "And your dress—" He arched back, his eyes drawing an X on the front of her, tracing where her dress crossed between her breasts. "What's it called when a dress does that? I like it."

  "It's, um, ah"—she looked down, trying to think what he meant—"a surplice bodice." She scowled up. "You don't need this much information about ladies' clothes."

  He was going to say more, but the gramophone groaned into its slowdown, preparing to stop. "Excuse me," she said.

  On the piano, she found her spectacles. She put them on, shaking, angry. It took her two tries to hook the left earpiece back into her hair and over her ear. She tried to calm herself by hunting through her cylinders. Not a word registered. She couldn't read a name on one of them. While behind her, he said, "We dance at the Bull and Tun." Conversationally, he added, "You know, you've never danced till you've danced with someone you like who's kissing your mouth as you go." He added, "Let me know if you want to try it."

  She turned to look at him, ready to knock him down.

  With narrow eyes, she watched him tap the side of his leg again, standing there in the center of the room as if having a casual dialogue on the various styles of dancing.

  Dancing with your mouth on someone's. No, she did not want to try it, thank you. She put the same cylinder on again. They could dance to the same thing over and over.

  He waited as she got the music going. Then he took her hand and put his palm at her back as if nothing unusual had been said.

  Good enough. She'd ignore it, too. She'd ignore the choler she felt; yes, she didn't doubt her face was red. She told him, "Let's practice the pivots."

  They were fast, so he was good at them.

  He was fast, she thought. In every sense.

  She didn't like the idea of him dancing with his mouth on some woman. Or some woman's mouth on him. It wasn't proper. It wasn't decent. And she certainly didn't want him to do that to her.

  Though she wondered for a second what it would feel like. Let him know?

  She remembered in the carriage house that he'd said she had to tell him if she wanted him to kiss her, that he wasn't going to unless she did. Tell him? She couldn't. Even if she'd wanted him to, which she didn't, she could never have been so bold. For a lady to say something so forward was beyond the pale of decorum.

  Besides, wasn't he the one who'd threatened in a hallway to take her "where flirting led"? So why was he making such a to-do over a kiss? Dryly, she told him as they danced, "All this commotion from a man who, at one point, wanted to lead me 'down the path.'"

  "Ah"—he laughed, taking her through a smooth turn—"so that's what you're hoping for. Not just kisses."

  "I didn't say that—"

  "No. You said I wanted it. But that's the way your mind works, isn't it, Miss Bollash?"

  She hated when he said her name like that. She said, "Don't be vulgar—"

  "Why? That's what you like so much about me. If I were a real gentleman, you couldn't blame me as easily. Hooligan Mick. Low-class Mick. Who has the poor taste to make you feel what you don't want to think about."

  "Damn you!" She stomped her foot, which ended their dance. They came to halt. Damn. She never cursed. She was horrified to hear it come out of her mouth.

  They stood there at the far edge of the floor, the tinny music across it continuing on without them.

  He laughed, surprised by her cursing and thoroughly pleased with himself. "Nice," he said, with chuckling, wicked approval. "Congratulations, Win—"

  She slapped him. Without thinking. Not once, but twice. She whacked the air with all her might and caught his cheek, a sharp smack. It was no accident. She meant to get it. Then, just because the contact felt so damn satisfying, she did it again. She would have hit him a third time, but he stopped her. He grabbed her arm.

  He stood above her, for a second as angry as she was, both of them engrossed in one another in this unholy way.

  He slowly lowered her arm, then let go, though the air was charged. They neither would let the other break his or her eyes away. Until Winnie happened to see out the corner of hers a red splotch on his cheek. The place where she'd struck him began to glow, more intense by the moment. She watched her own angry handprint, the spread of fingers, the impression of palm, appear vividly on the side of his face.

  "Oh," she said as she watched it get redder and redder. "Oh," with dismay. What had she done? She had never hit anyone in her life. Why Mick? Why him? "Oh, Lord, does it hurt?"

  She frowned and winced and put her hand to his cheek. The handprint was hot. She caressed it, running her fingertips over the frightful mark she'd made on him. She put her other hand up and caressed his face, both palms.

  He jerked as she embraced his jaw, but then let her touch him freely. Once her hands were there, they wouldn't stop.

  His cheeks were smooth with the faint grit of a shave that was half a day old. His jawbone was hard, angular; his eyes, the regard in their greenish depth, as fervid as the imprint she'd put on his skin. Her fingers fluttered over this face, her palms smoothing and cupping the topography of it, the planes and hollows. Regretfully, she retraced the livid red blotch up a cheek that had high, perfect bones. She drew the pads of her fingers down the cartilage of a narrow, straight nose, then along a mouth that—

  He captured one hand and pressed it to his mouth, breathing into her palm, his hand clasping the back of hers. Then, licking a warmth into the center of her palm, he kissed the inside of her hand. As he had her mouth so many days before.

  Winnie was speechless. She wouldn't have thought it were possible—he kissed her hand with a wet, open-mouthed kiss, with the push of his tongue, as he groaned and closed his eyes.

  Goose bumps … chills … the hair at the back of her neck, up her arms lifted. Her belly rolled. The room did a slow rotation around them, while Winnie stood still.

  Paralyzed. She wanted to take her hand away, but it wouldn't respond to her own volition, as if it didn't belong to her. When he raised his head, she made a fist, and he kissed her knuckles. She closed her eyes. Lord help her. />
  She used her other hand to reach and take her arm away from him. "I'm—" She could barely speak. "I'm not—not going"—her murmur broke again before she could finish—"down your path."

  "Too late," he whispered. "You're already on it." He added in a tone that sounded more resigned than happy about it, "Too late for both of us."

  The voice of the gramophone grew slow and low again, then rasped to a stop with her standing there, staring up at him.

  Then, clutching her tingling hand to her chest, she walked across the floor in her bare, stockinged feet. At the piano, she cranked the gramophone, round and round and round briskly. She wound it too tightly. The music started again at a high pitch, a crazy tempo.

  She walked back to Mick, into position, then had to stand there in front of him, both of them waiting for the machine's music to gain some semblance of sanity.

  The odd thing was, once it did, she couldn't. She was reluctant to put her arm on him, to reach up and touch him at all. The music played. Nothing happened. Until he slipped his hand under her arm, as if to begin dancing.

  But his hand instead ran lightly down her back, the hollow of her spine, and he said, "Let's have your skirts up again, Win."

  She couldn't have heard right. She let out a quick, nervous laugh when he actually took hold of a handful.

  When she stopped him, he shook his head in reprimand. He said, "Be good, Win. Do what I say."

  She let go, a reflex.

  Good. She'd been good all her life. A good girl who felt muscles tense in the pit of her stomach when he invited her to be good his way.

  He whispered, "So what did they tell you when you were bad, Winnie?"

  "What?" She looked up at him, blinking. Her heart began to thud at the base of her throat.

  As if he knew, with the edge of his thumb he touched her there, then traced her neck up the tendon to behind her ear.

  She shivered and murmured, "Give me your hand. Put your hand at my back where it belongs. We're supposed to be dancing."

  "Tell me about 'supposed to be,'" he whispered. "When you didn't do what you were supposed to, what did they tell you?" His face came closer. "What happened when you did what you wanted? What do I need to say to let you do what you'd like?" He changed tack. He said, "What I'd like is to kiss you. I would. But I'd like you to want it. Do you?"

  "N-n—" She got that far, then stopped. She didn't know. She was reeling again, caught in the strange energy of him. She wet her lips. No, she didn't want it.

  The music played behind them, its own little world, getting away from them. While he waited. Then touched her collarbone again, tracing it with his fingertip. She let him. The touch of his finger, so light, up then down her neck, was unearthly. Sublime.

  She bit her lip, closed her eyes.

  Then heard him say, "Fine," very softly, as he'd said once before. "When you can say what you want, you can have it."

  Just like that, he stopped.

  She opened her eyes to see him walk across the room himself to the gramophone. It was groaning again. He cranked it, then two seconds later was pushing her backward into pivots around the floor, the jangle of a recorded violin moving them.

  Let him know? she thought.

  Kissing him, she remembered, "really kissing him," as he called it, had been … exciting. Such a surprisingly powerful and tender connection to him. Unforgettable. As she spun backward round the room—as he let go of the counting, gathering himself into the rhythm alone without it, incorporating it into himself—she remembered how vital it felt when his mouth opened hers and he breathed into it.

  She was supposed to ask for this?

  She couldn't. She murmured, "You want too much."

  He danced and answered with his usual candor. "You criticize me and cry, Win. You curse me and slap me and move me downstairs." He shook his head at her. "Is it too much to want that you take a look at what you're doing?"

  She was saved from having to think about what he meant. Just then, as they moved across the dusty floor, the ball of her foot stepped squarely on a small and sharp object.

  "Ah— Wait— I've tramped on something." She halted them, hopping on one foot as she grabbed the other one under her skirt.

  The music kept going, though it wasn't as pronounced to Winnie as the sound of their breathing, both slightly breathless from waltzing and talking, both.

  She was clutching his arm, holding her foot, trying to figure out what she'd done, while he supported her balance. He was close. His arm remained around her back. Her hand gripped his wide shoulder.

  Yes, she thought, she wanted him to kiss her. Yes.

  But she didn't want to say. How unfair. She frowned, then scowled. How miserably unfair. She stood there sluicing her eyes sideways at him, flatfooted in one stockinged foot. She opened her mouth, closed it, skewed it to the side, then looked up, scrutinizing him.

  * * *

  Chapter 17

  « ^ »

  Holding Winnie, with her standing on one foot by the piano at the side of the music-room floor, Mick watched her screwed-up face—her brow furrowed downward, her mouth twisted up. She was trying to say something—

  By God, she was going to say it! he thought. He just knew she was. She clutched his back. He let her hang onto him. God bless, they were all over each other today.

  He could almost see her mind review the problem—how to get kissed without admitting she wanted it—from a thousand angles, trying to process each one.

  She opened her mouth.

  He leaned forward so as to hear every syllable or to grab a shred of one, at least, if she couldn't get it all out.

  Then Winnie said, "My foot hurts," and folded. Her long frame simply collapsed downward into her dress like a deflating balloon onto the floor.

  Mick stood above her, stymied, not sure if this were a good sign or not. After a moment, he sat down beside her, tried to reach under her dress for her foot, then got his hand slapped for it.

  Glumly, he protested, "I was going to look at your foot, see if I could find anything. Is it a splinter?"

  "No, I tramped on something larger than that."

  "This?" he asked, rotating to lean out onto one arm and pluck a small black screw off the floor. He showed her.

  She nodded. "It has to be from the piano. I slipped on it earlier, I think. I should have stopped. Look, it cut through my stocking." It made a pinprick of blood at the round swell of the ball, as if she'd tramped full force, all her weight.

  He dropped the screw into her hand, then took her foot. Like everything else, they fought over it, but he won by massaging his thumb up her arch.

  "Oh," she said. Then "Oh," again. "Oh, crumbs. What you're doing feels wonderful."

  She leaned back as, reluctantly, there on the floor, she let him take her foot into his lap. She stared at the screw in her hand. "I think it's from the music stand. It fell off last week."

  He rubbed her foot down the bottom strongly to the heel, then rotated her ankle.

  "Oh," she said again. "That feels impossibly good."

  He said, "So, when you were bad, what did they tell you? What did they do?"

  Her eyes blinked up from where they were policing his possession of her foot, taken by surprise to find the game on again. "Who?"

  "Your parents."

  "My parents didn't say anything."

  "Truly? Not a word?" He was puzzled. "Someone then. Someone else."

  She frowned and looked away.

  "A governess," he suggested.

  She whipped her eyes around to him, as if he'd read her mind.

  "So what did she say? What did she do?"

  "I had a lot of governesses." She frowned then said quickly, "Miss Nibitsky."

  "Ah, Miss Nibitsky," he repeated, sliding his hand up her leg a little, kneading the back of her lower calf. "So what did Miss Nibitsky say when you were horrid?"

  "She'd say, 'You little brat, if you don't do what I say, I'll break all your toys.'" Then she laughed shy
ly and looked down. "I've never told anyone that. How peculiar to say it to a grown man."

  "No, no." He shook his head, surprised, interested. "Would she break them?"

  She answered with a shrug. "I just stopped playing with anything I liked in her presence. One year, she canceled my birthday. She said I simply couldn't turn six. I'd have to wait till the following year."

  "What a wretched woman." He didn't like any of this. He withdrew a little. He rubbed the bottoms of her toes and asked, "Didn't you tell someone?"

  "Who? If I said anything to my father, he waved me away vaguely. If I told my mother, she got angry; she didn't believe me."

  Mick frowned and tried to get hold of his original notion. "Then what?" he asked. "What if you still wouldn't listen?" There must have been gentler reproofs, he told himself. He wanted to use them, to see if he could counter all that held Winnie back with reasons to go forward expressed as rigidly. He rubbed up her ankle, playing at the hem of her dress. "What if you were just a little bit bad?"

  She said nothing. He stopped, tilted his head. He had to look for her face. When he found it, the look on it—it was bloody terrible. "There was no 'little bit bad'?" he asked. Then he guessed more than he liked: "She hurt you," he said, "really hurt you."

  Winnie defended her upbringing quickly, yet it shocked him. She said, "She only used a cane once. She said that, if I were a boy, I'd be in boarding school by now, where in a blink, when children were as bad as I was, they sent them to the headmaster who made them stand on a pulpit and—" Her voice broke. She stopped.

  Mick let go of her foot and smoothed her dress down. He leaned back onto his arm, putting his hand up to his mouth, a finger across his bare lip.

  "What's wrong?" she asked, as if she'd offended him.

  In a way, she had. It was his turn to feel sick. He, who could cosh a rat bloody senseless, was revolted by Winnie's childhood. It was a good thing her story took place a long time ago, because, if he ever saw this Nibitsky woman, he would want to do her violence.